A culture blog.

The fruits of a titanic individual effort are rarely conventional. Chinese animator Liu Jian's independently conceived and created Have a Nice Day is a brief, stylish noir thriller that the Chinese tourism board is unlikely to love. Our story is centred around a bag of illicit cash, the proceeds of racketeering and mob rule. At first stolen … Continue reading Have a Nice Day

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, 2013’s Tomb Raider should be proud; 2018’s film version has tried gamely to copy its stellar reboot of a tired franchise, but in compressing its lessons and arcs has lost all of that game’s nuance. Alicia Vikander steps into the role haughtily popularised by Angelina Jolie in the frankly … Continue reading Tomb Raider

Ruben Östlund’s new satire, The Square, is an epic shot across the bows of the art world, savaging pretension and selfishness. It is almost certainly overlong and over-ambitious, but contains moments of sparkling wit and toe-curling discomfort, and some truly memorable imagery. Claes Bang, whom only Scandi fans will likely recognise, is the achingly cool Christian, curator … Continue reading The Square

Alex Garland is developing a justified reputation as an auteur for our times - he has written well-liked genre films, from 28 Days Later to Dredd, alongside a pair of the more thoughtful narrative games of this decade, DMC and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. His directorial debut Ex Machina cemented his position as a rising genre star, and his … Continue reading Annihilation

Lynne Ramsay’s new film nods heavily to Taxi Driver but offers a pleasingly individual and characterful take on isolation and trauma. It is taut and considered, carefully brutal, and produces a number of artfully crafted and sensitive shocks. Joaquin Phoenix is Joe, a quiet veteran who lives with his aging and declining mother in New York. His … Continue reading You Were Never Really Here

Netflix's quest for cinematic world domination continues with Duncan Jones's new film, Mute. The director of eerie cult classic Moon and the sprightly Source Code has demonstrated the fallacy of Netflix's model, however, with a frankly dull science fiction thriller. Alexander Skarsgård is the film's central and titular mute, a future-Amish man named Leo who won't have his vocal chords … Continue reading Mute

In recent years Greta Gerwig has begun to make good on her early promise, moving beyond the mumblecore trappings of her early acting work on film. Impressive turns in Jackie and 20th Century Women have demonstrated her increasing maturity and now, behind the camera, she has produced a wonderful and gentle bildungsroman, Lady Bird. Saoirse Ronan is the irrepressible … Continue reading Lady Bird

Black Panther arrives on a wave of cultural fervour, and has so far been met rapturously by both audiences and critics. The importance and worthiness of its success cannot be underestimated and should not be devalued. The film is not the movement, however, and Black Panther is only slightly above par for the Marvel course. Its original aesthetics … Continue reading Black Panther

Guillermo del Toro has pulled off that rare feat, mainstream critical acclaim for a pure and simple genre film. The Shape of Water is a fairy tale, a charming and arresting fable of love and fate, and one can only hope that its awards success triggers more such delightful experiments to be financed. Of course, for del … Continue reading The Shape of Water

If Phantom Thread is really to be Daniel Day-Lewis's final film, he has signed off with a suitably superb performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's latest exploration of power and relationships. This is a challenging and multi-faceted picture. Reynolds Woodcock, Day-Lewis's latest inhabited persona, is a celebrated and dedicated dressmaker to the 1950s elite in Bloomsbury. He lives … Continue reading Phantom Thread